Laughing At A Fool – updated 2017

by | Apr 5, 2010 | Thomas Fuller | 1 comment


When I was in high school my buddies and I weren’t the most ‘popular’ guys. But we were probably the funniest. And one of the ways we were very funny was to make fun of other people. We were very good at it. What we lacked in ‘physically beat you up’ ability, we made up for in ‘verbally beat you up’ ability. It was fun and it was oh so easy.

Part of the reason I was good at it was that my mother was good at it. She was very funny. She laughed easily at all sort of things. But in particular she loved to skewer people who were up on their high horse about something, or just because they had the money to show off how high their horse was. I liked that about her, it kept her down to earth in my mind.
 
But as time went on, I started to notice that this humor was keeping her from meeting people, was keeping her from having friends because she wasn’t just poking fun, she was also doing a bit of judging without knowing the people. She was making assumptions based on their wealth or clothes or country club. She retained her humor all her life, but as life took it’s toll on her she had less time to judge and more time to just enjoy people. I liked seeing that.
 
At the same time I started to see the same thing with me and my friends. We were losing out on knowing and becoming friends with people because we were too busy judging them. As one would hope, that adolescent judgment mellowed out as we aged and it wasn’t our only way of being funny as we got older.
 
When I had kids of my own I really wanted to make sure they found ways to have fun, be funny, even poke fun, without cutting off good people just because they were different, just because they may have ‘appeared’ to be a fool. I wasn’t always good at leading by example in this because I still can make fun of people pretty easily.
 
The truth is, maybe those other people you are laughing at are fools in certain areas. I know my share to this day (and they know me), but you run the risk of losing out on knowing the other parts of them as well. And that could, in the end, quite easily make you the lonely fool, right?
 
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
 
“To make a trade of laughing at a fool is the highway to become one.” – Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, English churchman and historian

Easter – updated 2017

by | Apr 4, 2010 | Easter, I Draw in Church | 2 comments

I draw in church. Yes, almost every single service for many, many years. I thought I might post some of these drawings on Sundays for a while instead of a napkin. I am starting with this one for obvious reasons.

The text is sort of hard to read, so here it is.

The drawing I did in the second church I went to on Easter 2006 with my dad who is old & Catholic but doesn’t like high mass & can’t hear anything buy jokingly thinks it will get him into heaven but isn’t really joking but he didn’t go to the other church which is Methodist and I was late to it but called my fiance to tell her & called my daughter as well who wants to meet at a 3rd church but Linda didn’t want to go & I understand so I will go later & return the cell phone that was left at my house yesterday at Chelsea’s bridal shower where she got deodorant & flour & towels & then eat ham & stuff & do taxes.
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Drawing and the one really long sentence © Marty Coleman
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When to Bury A Person – updated 2017

by | Apr 3, 2010 | Marty Coleman, Travel | 0 comments

I have a friend somewhere in the world, not sure where, named Agnes. She has traveled the globe, sat with prestigious, inspiring people, experienced life in ways most of us do not. She is in deep, deep love with her husband, with whom she experiences many of these things. Those are her dreams, to travel with him.

He now is struggling with a pretty serious illness and that travel isn’t something they can undertake for a while. She wishes she could, she yearns for it. But though those are her big dreams, they aren’t her only dreams. She makes smaller dreams a reality for herself and her husband in tender, kind and intimate gestures.
 
She tells the world about these things, along with her larger dreams, in her blog. I read it and it reminds me again and again how much I love knowing people like that are in the world. I don’t really need to ever meet her or her husband, though what a pleasure it would be, I have no doubt. All I really need to be inspired is to know the two of them exist.
 
Read her latest entry about her manifestation of a little dream at the end of the night and then go and see if you can’t find the same fulfillment in the magic of your own small world.
 
Dream on, Agnes, and thank you.
 
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
 
“There’s not much to do but bury a person when the last of their dreams are dead.” – Agnes, somewhere

Why I Used To Drink – Are You Drunk? #3 – updated 2017

by | Apr 2, 2010 | Are You Drunk? - 2010, George Jean Nathan | 0 comments

Have you ever been abstaining (or don’t ever drink) and found yourself at a bar or a gathering where everyone is drinking a LOT, getting drunk, loud, funny and interesting (or so they think)? If you are not drinking these people are the first two, drunk and loud, and for about 10 minutes, the third and fourth, funny and interesting. But after that they are just the first two. That grows old of course so you have three choices, drink the magic elixir that will make these people funny and interesting again, torture yourself by staying amidst them or go home (or the Waffle House).
I quit drinking a year before I left my job at a restaurant and bar I had been working at for over a decade. Until I stopped I would hang out after work and be one of the drunk, loud, funny and interesting ones. After I stopped I found that while I loved these people just as much as before, I no longer was seeing the ‘funny and interesting’ as I had before. My wife and kids became more interesting (which they should have been all along obviously, but hey, I was an idiot, ok?) and I liked going home at the end of work.

One point to remember in case you are in an alcohol dilemma, what you do now doesn’t just have consequences with a hangover. This is especially true of men, who may have to deal with women who might just happen to have memories longer than a comet’s tail. Be mindful that it, perhaps, is all being recorded in their brain for remembering a LONG time later. I am just sayin….
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman

“I drink to make other people interesting.” – George Jean Nathan, 1882-1958, American drama critic and editor

People Who Drink – Are You Drunk? #2 – updated 2017

by | Apr 1, 2010 | Ann Landers, Are You Drunk? - 2010, Family History | 5 comments


I stopped drinking when I was 38 years old, in 1993. I did not have the luxury of ignorance as I went about drinking during the years prior to that. My mother and father were both very heavy drinkers. My mother had to be felled by a brain hemorrhage (I found her virtually unconscious on the stairs and took her to the hospital), endure 6 months in the hospital recovering THEN 3 months more in an alcohol rehab facility before she gained sobriety. She was sober for 15 years until she died in 1988.

My father, from a long line of fighting Irish who drank, was more functional than my mother was, but no less the drinker. He stopped drinking as well. He went back and forth for a while, but eventually quit. He did drink in his later years, but never at the same level as before. He is still alive and kicking at age 91.

Our family was torn apart by alcohol in a terrible way. The arguments, disruptions, fear, embarrassment, danger and anger were ever present. Luckily the years of sobriety on the part of my mother really did much to heal the family and make the bad times part of our history, instead of our present. My younger sister in particular was substantially better off to have her later years (9-18) at home be with sober parents.

After many years where I didn’t really need to face it because my drinking seemed to be more moderate than theirs, I finally came to a point where I could see myself going down that same path. I had a number of nasty and sad incidences of my own making that made me realize this. I quit cold turkey on May 29th, 1993. Through no effort of my own, and for which I am very grateful, the desire left me and I haven’t had or wanted a drink for the last 17 years. I did go to one AA meeting, stand up and say ‘Hello, my name is Marty and I am an alcoholic’. I didn’t go back, though I left the door open that I would if I felt the need.

I only ever missed one thing, and that was as a waiter I would often be privileged to open and pour wine brought in by a particular customer, sometimes even the winemaker himself. I missed the social and sensual fun of doing that and being allowed to have a taste myself, as a courtesy. But beyond that, I never felt it’s loss to my life.

I never thought I drank to drown my sorrow. I felt I drank to allow for opportunities to arise. When you are drinking there is this small voice that says ‘maybe something fun will happen while I am here, drinking.’ ‘Maybe a pretty woman will think I am witty and funny’. ‘Maybe a bunch of us will get into some really outrageous activity’. For the most part it was about keeping alive the hope of something exciting happening. At least that is how I have thought about it so far. There were all sorts of underlying reasons as well, I am sure.

What I found once I quit was that I was better off not pursuing those adventures since they almost never really came to pass, and when they did, they more often got me into trouble in the end, not into the fun I was seeking.

It also came down to this: Who do I want to be? Do I want to be remembered as a drunk? Do I want my contributions to my world to be stunted because I was addicted to something? Do I want to be disappoint and hurt those I love and who love me? The answers to all of them were ‘no’.

I can tell you that 17 years later I haven’t woken up one single morning feeling I have missed anything by not drinking, nor have I felt I would have been more help to anyone had I drank the night before. I know I have dealt with the events of my life (kids, marriage, divorce, moving, unemployment, deaths in the family, etc) much better without the drink!

What is your story in this area? How have you dealt with it?
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman

“People who drink to drown their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.” – Ann Landers (Eppie Lederer), 1918-2002, American advice columnist